The ultimate effects of policies and correlated programmes of implementation are often reflected in the actual physical variations occurring on land use patterns. The purpose of this brief note is to evaluate how the integrated policy scenarios elaborated in the ESPON programme's project 3.2 "Spatial scenarios in relation to the ESDP and EU Cohesion Policy" can be downscaled and translated into land-use dynamics of a specific region. The results herein presented are of preliminary nature and aim to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach.
The exercise has been carried out for the study area including the cities of Dresden and Prague and the transport corridor between two cities defined by the motorway D8 on the Czech side and A17 on the German side .
The simulation of the land use spatial pattern has been performed by using the MOLAND Regional Growth model developed at the EC/JRC . The MOLAND model is based on "cellular automata" (CA) approach and allows to integrate spatial aspects of land use patterns with socio-economic (including transport plans), institutional and environmental features of territorial development. The MOLAND model simulates land use dynamics on the basis of digital map compiled at scale 1:25,000 and is calibrated with historical land use information.